On 20 January, several Bombay lawyers including senior counsels Navroze Seervai, Gayatri Singh and Mihir Desai read out the Preamble to the Constitution of India, outside the premises of Bombay High Court, to protest against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The protesting lawyers stated that ‘the CAA provides citizenship to only six religious community refugees omitting the Muslim community, which is constitutionally wrong.’
“We read the Preamble to reaffirm our faith in the Constitution of India and as a means to protest against some action taken across the country against people, which is against the Constitution,” the senior counsel Navroze Seervai asserted.
‘No one can divide the country and its citizens based on religion,’ they further added.
Further, the lawyers also circulated an article written by Prof C Raj Kumar, founding Vice-Chancellor of OP Jindal Global University which states that the CAA is an arbitrary law and it may not pass constitutional scrutiny.
“Firstly, it (CAA) violates Article 14 of the Constitution, which says nobody should be denied equality before the law. Secondly, it also violates Article 15, which prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth,” advocate Ashraf Ahmed Sheikh mentioned during the protests.
